SF patch #720991 by Gary Herron:
A small fix for bug #545855 and Greg Chapman's
addition of op code SRE_OP_MIN_REPEAT_ONE for
eliminating recursion on simple uses of pattern '*?' on a
long string.
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index a85273a..054559b 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -54,6 +54,10 @@
 Extension modules
 -----------------
 
+- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
+  recursion limit.  (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
+  and Greg Chapman.)
+
 - New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
   recursively.